THE LURE OF LIMA, CITY OF THE KINGS
BY WILLIAM JOSEPH SHOWALTER
AUTHOR OF "CUBA-THE SUGAR MILL OF THE ANTILLES," "TWIN STARS OF CHILE," "VIRGINIA-A COMMON
WEALTH THAT HAS COME BACK," ETC., IN THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
IT WAS a dull midwinter morning that
brought me into the busy harbor of
Callao, the principal port of Peru. As
our ship came to anchor and the port for
malities got under way, Lima loomed upon
the horizon-Lima, founded as the City
of the Kings, developed into the viceregal
capital of a continent, and latterly trans
formed into a modern Latin-American
metropolis.
A pall of dense clouds hung low over
the Rimac Valley, that floor-level and fer
tile plain which the Peruvian capital shares
with imposing ruins of lost civilizations,
with beautiful haciendas that form islands
of green surrounded by seas of sand, and
with occasional stumps of ancient moun
tains which the erosion of the ages has
not yet conquered.
But the clouds were still high enough
for the spires and towers of the city to
rise out of the distance, with an air of
welcome to the traveler.
A fine old fletero-he confessed to 82
years and clearly was a full-blooded de
scendant of the ancient people who dwelt
there before the Old World even suspected
the existence of a Western Hemisphere
took me ashore in his launch.
Tall and erect despite his years, with
his face eroded by decades of hardship,
and with his gnarled but sinewy hands still
supple, he seemed a lone survivor of the
heroic age of his race, when men were
giants upon whose shoulders fourscore
years rested lightly.
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PIZARRO
I had come to see the first-founded cap
ital of South America in the process of
modernization, and to catch something of
the romance and lure of its nearly four
centuries of dramatic history; and I hoped
to gather inspiration for the undertaking
by following further the footsteps of Fran
cisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, those
two baseborn lads of Old Spain whose
path I had picked up at Panama and fol
lowed to Tfumbez-a path that led to the
glory of the conquest of Peru and the
grave of ignominious death at the hands
of the executioner and the assassin.
But in going from Callao to the capital
over the splendid, eight-mile concrete bou
levard, where late-model automobiles and
heavy-duty trucks have taken the place of
antiquated, high-wheeled carriages and
snail-pacing bullock carts, even that ro
mantic past for the moment became
obscured by another looming historical
horizon.
For, about halfway to Lima, a vast
ridge rises from the valley floor, on which
the iron heel of the Conqueror could leave
no impress. The highway goes neither
over nor around it, but cuts boldly through.
If your eyes are sharp, you will discover
thatitisnotahillatall,butahugeman
made mound, perhaps the greatest pile of
adobe brick in the world.
A VAST PROJECT OF THE PAST
When the chief engineer of the biggest
construction company in South America
was asked what it would cost to reproduce
that structure to-day, even with the cheap
labor--compared to ours--of Peru, he
calculated its cubical contents and found
that there is not now a single engineering
project under way, from the Rio Grande
to the Strait of Magellan, that would call
for such an expenditure as the replace
ment of this adobe hill would involve.
That huge structure-several city blocks
long, half as wide, and perhaps 50 feet
high-speaks of times so remote that the
doings of Pizarro and Almagro seem but
the events of yesterday; proclaims a race
which was forgotten before they were
born. It carries us back to a time of
which only irresponsible Legend dares
speak with assurance; to a time before
which more trustworthy Tradition stands
uncertain; to a time that was already far
too remote for memory when History
wrote her first halting passages.
Beside the thoroughly modern boule
vard which runs through that ancient edi
fice stands a pedestal surmounted by a
wrecked automobile, with a legend of
warning; and a little farther on, atop an
adobe fence post, sits the grinning skull
of some poor Yorick of the forgotten race
which built that great ruin.